Harawi – spoken Persian of Herat

Herat, a major town in western Afghanistan, was once the capital of the Greater Khorasan, and one of the most vibrant culture centers of the whole Persian-speaking world. But I’m not going to tell you all about it. Let me just draw a sketch of the dialect of Persian spoken there. It’s called Fārsi-ye Harawi (Persian of Herāt, duh!) and is – I think – the most approachable variety of Afghanistani Persian from the point of view of a Tehrani-learner.

Why I’m taking Harawi and not Kabuli as my paragon (=the typicalest) Dari dialect? Well, the descriptions of Kabuli all are somewhat dated and since they were published Kabul grew from a city of, say, 300 thousand people to a 3-million godzilla of a town, crowded by “newcomers” from every corner of Afghanistan (and beyond). And this, my friends, probably means that people there speak something quite different to the Kabuli of my books. Of course this point stands for Herat/Harawi as well, but to a lesser degree (I hope).